Hope, dear Betty? For behold where she has led me! My wildest
imaginations, during my hours of sickness in the past, never could
have compassed such a destiny. All my life long my word has been,
"This is well, and to-morrow it will be better; and God knows when to
bring that morrow." You mistake me if you thought I ever believed that
we should not be active for others. That is of course. With regard to
our own minds, it seems to me we should take holy care of the present
moment, and leave the end to God.

Now I am indeed made deeply conscious of what it is to be loved. Most
tunefully sweet is this voice which affirms ever, for negation belongs
to this world only. Its breath so informs the natural body that the
spiritual body begins to plume its wings within, and I seem appareled
in celestial light.

A few paragraphs from letters written by Hawthorne follow:--

Six o'clock, P. M.

What a wonderful vision that is--the dream-angel. I do esteem it
almost a miracle that your pencil should unconsciously have produced
it; it is as much an apparition of an ethereal being as if the
heavenly face and form had been shadowed forth in the air, instead of
upon paper. It seems to me that it is our guardian angel, who kneels
at the footstool of God, and is pointing to us upon earth, and asking
earthly and heavenly blessings for us,--entreating that we may not be
much longer divided, that we may sit by our own fire-side. . . .


BOSTON, September 9, half past eight P. M., 1839.